Rangel Walks Out

Was what unfolded at the House today a train wreck, or Congressman Charles Rangel’s version of a dignified exit? It was dignified, sort of, if you count Rangel shaking hands with the lawyers who were about to present the ethics case against him before he “stunned the packed hearing room,” as the Times put it, by walking out of what was in effect his trial by the House Ethics Committee. Rangel had come as his own lawyer, and then asked for a delay on the grounds that there had already been so many delays that he’d run out of money to pay the lawyers he had. He acknowledged that he was allowed, within House rules, to have a legal-defense fund—an option that the committee staff said they pointed out two years ago—but he didn’t, and so why was anyone holding that against him, and making him go through all this before he did? That was the gist, anyway. In Rangel’s words:

And so the whole idea that I’m denied counsel because I’ve been screaming for a hearing—that really doesn’t take away from—the argument is I’m being denied the right to a lawyer right now, because I don’t have the opportunity to have a legal defense fund set up, and because I can’t afford another million dollars, and can’t even promise that to counsel.

None of this exactly had the effect of making Rangel’s case sound like Gideon v. Wainright. He expressed outrage that his years of service weren’t being taken into account, which would be a more convincing argument in a case that didn’t involve misusing his office. (He added, in a statement this afternoon, that the Ethics Committee was violating “the most basic rights of due process that is guaranteed to every person under the Constitution.”) “You’re telling me all of the things I can do but you’re not giving me time to do it,” Rangel said in the hearing. “I think no one can say that that’s not the way this ends up.”

Then he walked out; but that’s not the way this ends up either. The hearing, and the presentation of evidence, continued without him. The charges involve taxes, fundraising violations, favors for donors, and four rent-stabilized apartments. (But then those are often shady.) According to the Ethics Committee chairwoman, Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, “no material fact is in dispute.”

Amy Davidson is a New Yorker staff writer. She is a regular Comment contributor for the magazine and writes a Web column, in which she covers war, sports, and everything in between.